The 2014 Ford Fiesta ST: What the critics say

Road & Track

The new Fiesta ST shows Ford doing what it does best—“producing excellent, soulful small cars, and then selling them dirt cheap.” Until now, and for decades, you had to buy a Ford in Europe to see what the U.S. automaker could really do. But six months after this hopped-up Fiesta hatchback hit the streets in Berlin, it arrives here more than ready to live up to its foreign press. Quick, agile, and plain fun, the five-door ST has become “our new benchmark for hot-hatch amusement.”

Autoweek

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It’s not just the new 197-horsepower engine that makes the ST a “seriously engaging car.” Chassis tweaks make handling more dynamic, while the impressive six-speed manual transmission puts the driver in control. Still, the ST’s most obvious advantage over the $14,000 standard Fiesta is “the extra serving of satisfying, high-protein power” delivered by its turbocharged, direct-injection four-cylinder.

Car and Driver

The ST will never sell in big numbers in the U.S., but this “spunky” compact is “more important for what it says about Ford than what it does for the company’s bottom line.” It “proves that Ford isn’t without a soul, that somewhere inside that giant transnational monolith that pays the bills with pickup-truck sales, there are people who actually care about small cars.”